Many organizations provide services to customers, which may include installation, configuration, repair, or maintenance of customer systems. A large service organization may have documented standard procedures for a number of standard service procedures. However, the procedures may be customized to meet the needs or wishes of specific customers, to meet the circumstances of specific geographic areas, or for other reasons.
In previous service-providing organizations, documentation has been mostly in static forms, such as word-processor documents. Documents generated by one part of the organization have not always been made available to other parts of the organization. For example, generic procedures may be documented by the engineers who design the systems to be serviced, while customer-specific customizations may be documented by customer-account personnel on a different continent. As a result, it has not always been easy for a representative or operative to be sure of having complete and up-to-date documentation for a procedure that is to be carried out. The representative or operative may be, for example, a salesperson, a service or maintenance engineer, or a member of the customer's own personnel.